BBC News with Sue Montgomery
King Juan Carlos of Spain has visiting the university hospital in Santiago to meet survivors of the high-speed train crash that killed 80 people. Reports suggest that the train was traveling at double the official speed limit at the time of the accident. Tom Burridge reports.
Some of those in hospital are still in a serious condition so it’s possible that the death toll will rise further. An investigation into why the train derailed causing so much devastation is now underway. One of the drivers of the train remains in hospital and there are unconfirmed reports that the train was traveling too fast at the time of the crash.
An opposition leader in Tunisia has been killed. Mohamed Brahmi was shot dead outside his home in Tunis. Hundreds have taken to the streets accusing that the governing Islamist party Ennahda of complicity in his death. Tunisia’s biggest trade union has announced a general strike on Friday. Here is Sebastian Usher.
This is the second political assassination in Tunisia in six months. The first was the popular leftist opposition leader Chokri Belaid that triggered widespread protests and a political crisis that led to the prime minister’s resignation. Mr. Brahmi is not as big a political figure as he was but he too is a leftist who’s criticized the governing Islamist party Ennahda. After Mr. Belaid’s assassination in February, many Tunisians accuse the Party of not doing enough to stamp out a rise in Islamist violence with some going further and saying it was actively fomenting it, such accusations are already appearing over Mr. Brahmi’s killing.
The United Nations Security Council has called for an end to foreign support for armed groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The US Secretary of State John Kerry who chaired a UN debate said the United States was very concerned about reports of renewed external support for the M23 rebels who are fighting Congolese government forces. Mr. Kerry did not name any country but correspondents say it’s a message directed at Rwanda which UN experts and Washington have accused of backing the M23. Rwanda denies backing rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo where more than 2.5million people have been made homeless by armed conflict.
The United States and European Union have urged South Sudan’s leaders to maintain calm and prevent violence after President Salva Kiir sacked his cabinet including his vice president. A senior White House official Grant Harris told the BBC the US was deeply concerned about the situation.
“The key strategic choice right now that needs to be made is transparent governance, reconstitute the government, do it in accord with the constitution and tackle these challenges. When the government, when the state was formed two years ago, it laid out a vision for democracy and for development and these are the things that we need to get back to and make sure they are being advantage in a very concrete way.”
World News from the BBC
The grassroots protest movement in Egypt Tamarod has urged its supporters to take part in mass rallies on Friday called by the country’s army chief. On Thursday General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who orchestrated the ousting of the Islamist president Mohamed Morsi said the protest would endorse the army’s efforts to confront what he described as violence in Tahrir. The spiritual leader of Muslim Brotherhood has called for peaceful demonstrations against what he denounced as a bloody coup.
Pope Francis has arrived at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for what’s expected to be his largest event in Brazil so far. Tens of thousands of faithful have been gathering ahead of the welcoming ceremony at World Youth Day. His visit comes after month of anti-government protests in Brazil. Earlier Pope Francis told pilgrims in Rio’s cathedral he wanted them to stir things up.
“What is it that I hope as a consequence of World Youth Day I wanted to get messy. Inside here it’s going to get messy. Is it gonna get messy in Rio? It is. But I want things stirred up in the Dyer Seas. I want you to go out there. I want the church to take to the streets. I want to defend against everything that is worldly from instillations, from comfort, from clericalism everything that keeps us close to ourselves. The parishes, schools and institutions are meant to be used to go out. If they don’t reach out, they’d become NGOs and the church can’t be a NGO.”
Prosecutors in the United States have charged four Russians and a Ukrainian with the theft of more than 160 million credit and debit card numbers which were subsequently resold around the world. Prosecutors are describing it as the largest hacking in Data Bridge ever have taken place in the US. Individuals and corporations are estimated to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.